Lucy Carne: World Health Organisation’s advice to prevent fertile women from drinking alcohol is unrealistic and sexist

The WHO’s advice that fertile women be teetotal until menopause is straight out of Gilead. Don’t they realise that having a drink is how some women fall pregnant in the first place, asks Lucy Carne.

Blessed be the commanders of the World Health Organisation with their latest decree to the fertile women of the human race.

The same esteemed group that made Robert Mugabe a goodwill ambassador and told us there was nothing dodgy happening in Wuhan, have now announced that women of child-bearing age should not drink any alcohol.

No, not pregnant women or women wanting to conceive. The WHO refers specifically to that minor biological cohort that is any woman of “child-bearing age”.

Welcome to The Handmaid's Tale. Picture: George Kraychyk/Hulu

According to their advice, females from their first period to menopause (so about 13 to 50 years old) must be teetotal.

That’s more than 30 years of abstinence for the sake of safe procreation.

What next? Make women with working wombs wear white bonnets and call them Oftedros?

The absurd recommendation is straight out of Gilead, the dystopian nation in Margaret Atwood’s novel (and TV series) The Handmaid’s Tale which documents the enslavement of fertile women.

To be clear, it’s not an official ban on drinking, but advice recommended on page 17 of the draft of the WHO’s Global alcohol action plan 2022-2030.

The document, released publicly on Thursday, urges countries to give “appropriate attention” to the prevention of drinking in certain groups, including “women of child-bearing age”.

While also recommending an international booze-free day or week, the plan also warns that people must be protected from the pressure to drink, “especially in societies with high levels of alcohol consumption where heavy drinkers are encouraged to drink even more”.

The blanket guidance, which seemingly includes all ovulating women, regardless of whether they want kids or not, was met with accusations of scaremongering, sexism and enabling ‘sharia creep’.

There are concerns that it is not just some harmless advice in a draft plan, but will be used as a justification to further curtail women’s rights globally.

“We absolutely have to stand up to an agenda which increasingly treats every woman of child-bearing age as ‘pre-pregnant’. We put women’s lives and wellbeing at risk when we reduce them to vessels,” British Pregnancy Advisory Service chief executive Clare Murphy said.

Matt Lambert, the chief executive of the Portman Group, the social responsibility and regulatory body for alcohol in the UK, said that the WHO’s advice should be ignored.

“As well as being sexist and paternalistic, and potentially restricting the freedoms of most women, it goes well beyond their remit and is not rooted in science,” he said.

The WHO’s advice to prevent drinking among women of child-bearing age has been slammed as sexist. Picture: iStock

Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “The idea that it is unsafe for women of child-bearing age to drink any alcohol is unscientific and absurd. Moreover, it is none of the WHO’s business”

Dag Rekve from WHO’s Alcohol, Drugs and Addictive Behaviours Unit told BBC radio that the next draft would make it clearer what they meant by “appropriate attention”, but warned that “if women are planning to become pregnant or if women are engaging in unprotected sex and can become pregnant, they need to know the incredible harm that can happen to their potential future child”.

Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder causes irreparable damage to children in the womb.

The days of having a few drinks while knocked up are long gone.

“Do whatever you want. Just don’t do crack and don’t bungee jump,” my laid-back obstetrician once advised me.

Women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy should not drink any alcohol, Australia’s National Health & Medical Research Council says.

About 87 per cent of Aussie women, according to a 2016, now stop drinking as soon as they know they’re pregnant.

Ostensibly, WHO’s advice aims to prevent harm to unborn children.

But the heavy-handed tactic fails to address that people who suffer alcohol abuse will not suddenly stop their heavy drinking just because WHO says so.

Nor do they address anywhere in their report the damaging effects of alcohol on men’s sperm quality.

WHO also seems to ignore the prominent role alcohol sometimes plays in facilitating pregnancy.

My friends and I joke about how, if it wasn’t for a few drinks, a tipsy contraception oversight and fortunate cycle timing, we’d never have had kids.

“I take it these are IVF twins?” the sonographer asked me during a scan a few years ago.

“No, they’re red wine twins,” I replied. She nodded knowingly.

With decreasing population a concern for nations across the world, including China, I honestly fear for the continuation of the human race if a fertile woman can’t have a drink, when she’s not yet pregnant.

Here’s hoping in their next draft plan, WHO dials down the misogynistic medical fascism.

Until then, may the Lord open that bottle of wine.